Worth Your Weight in Gold? If You’re a Man

Here’s yet another example of the double standard: The higher a woman’s weight in late middle age, the lower her net worth. Not so for men, especially really heavy ones, who may be worth more than their normal-weight counterparts.

This conclusion comes from a study of more than 7,000 men and women who are part of a large federally funded research project underway at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

Researchers collected individual net worth data for men and women between the ages of 51 and 60 and divided them into three groups according to weight. The first group was normal or slightly overweight. They had a body mass index, or BMI--a measurement that combines height and weight--of less than 30. The second group was mildly obese, with a BMI of 30 to 35. People in the third group were obese or severely obese, with a BMI of 35 or above. (To put this in perspective, a person who weighs 180 pounds and is 5 feet 11 tall has a BMI of 25; at 5 feet 5 and 180 pounds, a person’s BMI would be 30; and at 5 feet and 180 pounds, it would be 35.)

In 1992, the Michigan team found that women with the highest BMI had an individual net worth 40% lower than their normal-weight counterparts.

But men with the highest BMI had the greatest net worth: a little more than $201,000 compared with the thinnest group of men, who reported a net worth of just over $146,000. Researchers don’t know whether this was a statistical fluke or whether it was caused by a phenomenon social scientists call “the portly banker effect”: the notion that being fat aids some men and makes them appear prosperous and successful.

In 1998, when the participants were surveyed again, the economic disparity among women was even greater than before: The largest women reported an individual net worth of $90,303, compared with $225,973 for the normal-weight group. But there was little difference among men: The fattest had a net worth of $238,000, compared with $244,000 for the normal-weight group.

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Stephanie J. Fonda, a member of the team that conducted the study, said researchers controlled for marital status in analyzing the data and found that net worth for married men was not affected by obesity, while it was for married women.

Fonda said her colleagues have speculated that this may be due to the more limited “marriage market” obese women may face, and might reflect the greater likelihood that larger women are more likely than others to marry men who earn less than their peers.

In any case, Fonda said, the study “is suggestive that obese women are further stigmatized.”